Empire of the Iguanadons

Leave your political correctness at the door.

Israel Fires on Syria

Slight change of pace here, yes, still political in nature, but it's something I consider important. Yes, I know I already have a topic for this but it's old and this is new.

As you may or may not be aware, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) responded to an incident in the Golan Heights today. The Syrian military had fired several shells over the border, with one mortar attack directed toward an IDF forward base there. The IDF responded by firing a guided missile at the artillery station responsible for the mortar attack. This, in combination with Syrian military bombings along the Turkish border, has raised the ugly specter of a regional conflict involving Syria, NATO, and now potentially the IDF as well.

This marks the first time since the 1973 Yom-Kippur War that Israel has fired into Syrian territory for any reason. Whether you happen to support Israel or not, this is a hugely dangerous situation that can get out of control quickly if the Syrians or Iranians decide something has to be done about it. Both are known to be openly hostile to Israel, and it isn't a given that Syria lacks the power to engage just because they're busy slaughtering their own people.

Given the results of the US presidential election, this becomes even more dangerous. Obama is already well known as being cold to Israel, and his re-election assures that coldness will continue. So this raises real concerns about our alliance relationship and whether or not the US will come to Israel's aid should all out war break out. I for one am not hopeful, and while the country sits distracted by General Petraeus' resignation, nobody seems to be paying attention to Syria. In fact, many seem to think ignoring the problem will make it go away.

Many of us have been subconsciously aware something like this was coming. A regional war in the Middle East will turn ugly, fast, and we need to be ready for what may come. For those of you, like me, who believe in the End Times, this is really nothing terribly surprising as this is what is widely expected to lead up to eventual Armageddon. Let's just hope this isn't what it looks like..........................RIP United States of America

As you have pointed out, Abbas figured this part out already. They've got a handle on their affairs internally, and for all intents and purposes appear to be at peace with their situation. All I see remaining is for them to properly integrate with the country they're in, rather than whining about something everyone knows they'll never get.

You seem to imply that this would just be a matter of choice for them. It is not. You cannot become a citizen of Israel, unless you are either a born jew, or marry a jew who lives there. Israel does have non-jewish citizens - these are descendants of non-jewish people who stayed in areas that became Israel proper. They have limited civil rights, though not nearly as limited as the non jews in the occupied territories. Israel will never give citizenship to such a large group of non-jews. Forget it. It's not going to happen. It would undermine their reason to exist: the jewish state.

Uh, nah bro, they're not. I think Anon covered that well enough too. Prior to 1948 you won't find mention of them at all, other than as a designation for residents of a British colonial territory. They cannot be a national identity because they never had a nation. They're very much a political propaganda tool invented by the Arabs and unfortunately adopted by the American left as a political tool.

Anonymous said:

Israel will never give citizenship to such a large group of non-jews. Forget it. It's not going to happen. It would undermine their reason to exist: the jewish state.

And oddly enough, this isn't something I support. Nobody is aware of this because the issue hasn't really come up before. Israel has a right to exist as a nation, but if that means turning themselves into an apartheid state the world won't stand for that. They do have some obligation to compromise, I just am not among those who believes that they should compromise their territorial integrity to the point of absurdity like those who think the pre-1967 borders make sense.

It may not look like it now, but perhaps Abbas and the Israelis are taking their first steps to properly integrating their societies with each other. We probably will all be dead and gone by the time it's over, but I suspect we can at least lay claim to witnessing the groundwork.

Which particular palestinians? Arab christians? Druze? Samaritans? Bedouins? Armenians? They've been created turned into a single Palestinian ethnicity by the occupation, when in the 'western'/Israeli narrative, these previously different ethnicities suddenly became either 'decendants of illegal arab immigrants in the liberated promised land', or 'a brutally oppressed, stateless ethnic minority in occupied lands', depending on whom you ask.

The Palestinians have never been an ethnic identity, always a nationalist one. By and large only Muslims and Christians tend to hold this identity; the Druze, Samaritans, Bedouins and Armenians (although I don't know if there are too many of those in Israel) have all generally identified as Israeli. In the case of the Druze in particular, they generally sided with Israel during the 1948 was and the IDF specifically spared their villages from destruction.

The identity was well established before the 1948 war; everyone forgot about it for a while afterwards though because Palestinian society was so badly crushed and the remnants scattered across the Middle East. It didn't really begin to reappear in any sort of force again until Fatah emerged (at that point a terrorist organisation) and during the First Intifada. There may have been a period in the middle of this where the Palestinian's were satisfied to live under the rule of Jordan and Egypt (I'm not sure about the Arab Israeli's and what they identified as), but there may not have been. I don't even know whether any suitable evidence remains on the question.

Also, Palestinians are the majority in the occupied territories

Samson said:

Prior to 1948 you won't find mention of them at all, other than as a designation for residents of a British colonial territory.

That's not true though; the term has been in use since the 1920's, and it was coined by Arab intellectuals, not the British. As far as I'm aware, and use of the term by the British was adopted following the Arab use of the term, not the other way around.

Samson said:

Nobody is aware of this because the issue hasn't really come up before. Israel has a right to exist as a nation, but if that means turning themselves into an apartheid state the world won't stand for that.

This is my main concern about Israel annexing the territories though; there seems to be an strong (and in my opinion unhealthy) focus on maintaining a Jewish ethnic identity, which has been radicalized (well, to be fair, it was somewhat radical during the settlement days anyway) by successive decades of warfare and terrorism. Which leaves me fairly concerned that if there was to be only one state and Israel lost its Jewish identity, there would inevitably be a very strong push to implement apartheid policies to 'maintain the states Jewishness' (this would probably coincide with a growth in Palestinian radicalism with a focus on wiping out the Jews).

That's my main rational for two states. It think to two peoples have become to embittered to live in one state, but with two states they may have a better chance of being able to live with each other.

Also...rockets are hitting Jerusalem now...Hamas must have upgraded (although they still aren't really killing anyone; aside from those three a couple of days ago no other Israeli's have been killed). Its good to see this time though that Israel is being very precise targeting militants rather than going psycho-crazy destroying infrastructure like they did in 2008 (which comically included an event where they drove tanks over the Gaza chicken farms and crushed 100,000 chickens to death. Poultry). But who knows; maybe Egypt will manage to get a ceasefire in place and stop this from turning into another war.

Rockets hitting Jerusalem may have sealed Hamas' fate. The parliament just authorized calling up another 75,000 reservists. Sounds like an all out ground invasion is now a certainty, and all sources seem to think that by this time tomorrow it'll be heavily engaged. I say good. Hamas needs to go, and the only way to get rid of them is to wipe them out or drive them into Egypt.

Also, if you think Egypt is going to do anything other than support Hamas in this now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power there you're more naive than I thought.

Also, if you think Egypt is going to do anything other than support Hamas in this now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power there you're more naive than I thought.

Well, they've already managed to get the two parties to sign one ceasefire, and since that one was then promptly ignored by both parties, they're trying to get another one signed. That's a bit different from doing nothing other than supporting Hamas; I'll go out on a limb and state that Egypt appears to be the only nation actually doing anything to stop the fighting.

It won't. Hamas will do what they always do and use this time to rearm and prepare for another round in a year or two, and Israel steadfastly refuses to see things through to their proper end.

That phrase 'see things through to their proper end' sounds kind of sinister, are you calling for ethnic cleansing? Or do you see Hamas as something separate from the population of Gaza that you can simply surgically remove, leaving a viable patient that isn't Hamas?

If it were that easy, don't you think they would have done it? It would involve killing the vast majority of the population in Gaza, women and children included.

Looks like another Iranian style islamic takeover to me, which is something I called last year when this shit all got started.

A PoS culture isn't going to produce a government we like. In fact, our own advanced and enlightened culture has trouble doing do. The improvement lies in the fact that it's not our puppet but their own. We had nothing to do with it.

Ethnic cleansing? No, that's not what I was calling for. All I'm calling for is a proper and decisive victory over Hamas, one which preferable results in most or all of them being dead, but at the very least ousted from power and in no shape to return later.

It is that easy, and they could have done it many times over by now, but our chicken shit leaders here in the US constantly get cold feet about supporting such an endeavor.

Plus, given what Morsi just pulled in Egypt, it's pretty clear the Muslim Brotherhood isn't interested in anything resembling a representative government.

Ethnic cleansing? No, that's not what I was calling for. All I'm calling for is a proper and decisive victory over Hamas, one which preferable results in most or all of them being dead, but at the very least ousted from power and in no shape to return later.

That's my point. Hamas isn't an entity separate from the population of Gaza. It is the population of Gaza. Anything done by people from Gaza that Israel doesn't want to happen is by definition Hamas.

An operation that results in most or all of them being dead implies killing a double digit percentage of the population. Any survivors would certainly want to take revenge for such a massacre, automatically defining them as Hamas as well, necessitating another massacre.

Sorry for the very late response, most of the topic has already been covered thoroughly enough for my taste, but I wanted to add one small point that, not being jewish, most of you probably weren't aware of and certainly didn't already cover. Israel has fought Syria before, this time of year, while the Christians of the world get ready for Christmas, we Jews are currently celebrating Hanukkah which was really all about our victory over Syria. We've got history with them, long before Assad. The fact that we've co-existed along side their nation these past millennium is more surprising than that we opted to return fire without real regard for possible causalities on their side.

Israel's launched some strikes on Syria again. We don't really know what they've hit, but I can't imagine whatever it was they took out was up to any good.

I'd have to agree, despite any contrary ideals one might hold about Israel, they are usually quite discriminating in choosing their targets are tend to have the best of the best when it comes to hardware so that they usually hit their targets and only their targets.

The_Fury said:

about 20 new versions of G++ which of course breaks everything

Funny how every time they "fix" our compilers we all have to scramble to make our code work again, isn't it?

Funny how every time they "fix" our compilers we all have to scramble to make our code work again, isn't it?

I have to agree, it is totally annoying and it is not like linux makes it easy to run or install multiple compiler versions or anything like that either. Other than the CONST problem, hehe there is a pun hiding in there somewhere, this new Variable Set But Not Used compiler option is god damn nuts.

Oh and this one, been doing my head in over this for 2 hours, I have this command void do_Blaa (CHAR_DATA * ch, char *argument), and its matching DECLARE_DO_FUN( do_Blaa ); in mud.h, the compiler loves it, does not complain a bit, even tells me that my coding is like sweet sweet candy in its mouth.

However as soon as i try and cedit the command within the mud, I get BUG: Error locating do_Blaa in symbol table. No such process. So now even the code itself wants to manifest CONST problems, or lack of CONST in this instance. LOL, maybe i shoud be using redhat/oldhat 2.2 or something and using smaug1.4a, you know the good old days, where all those problems remain hidden from you and jump out and suprise you with a core dump.

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